Guardian/special reports on DU Via NY Transfer News * All the News That Doesn't Fit The ministry that hides from truth Gulf war veterans deserve better treatment and we need honesty Special report: depleted uranium George Monbiot Thursday January 11, 2001 On April 21 1999, I telephoned the Ministry of Defence and asked its press office whether Nato was using weapons tipped with depleted uranium in Kosovo. "Certainly not," I was told. I phoned Nato on the same day, and was told that these weapons were in fact being deployed. Yesterday the MoD's press officer confirmed to me that his department knew DU was being used at the time. So had the MoD lied to me? "You shouldn't read anything into it," he assured me, "it certainly wasn't intentionally misleading." A definitive denial was issued by mistake. Perhaps we should view the ministry's current position paper on the testing of Gulf war veterans for depleted uranium as another unfortunate accident. Or perhaps we simply shouldn't read anything into it. Otherwise we'd have no choice but to conclude that the mistakes it contains are a series of lies. The fine particles of dust released when a DU-tipped weapon hits its target, are, the MoD insists, "rapidly diluted and dispersed into the environment by the weather", soon becoming "difficult to detect". Yet samples taken over Kuwait City in 1993, two years after the end of the Gulf war, found depleted uranium particles in the air. This result appears to have been corroborated both by the preliminary findings of the UN team in Kosovo and by the results obtained in Iraq by the researcher Dr Chris Busby. He found that levels of radiation in the air over the Gulf war battlefields were 20 times higher last year than the levels in Baghdad. No one "other than those in an armoured vehicle penetrated by a DU projectile", the MoD paper insists, would be exposed to enough uranium "to receive a radiation dose greater than 20 to 30 millisieverts". In the most "extreme and unlikely cases", such as working for 30 or 40 hours inside a tank which had been hit by one of these missiles, a serviceman might receive "a radiation dose of the order of 50 millisieverts." Such radiation levels should present little cause for concern, the paper argues, as the "safe dose" for people working in the UK is calculated at 50 millisieverts a year. Servicemen receiving this dose from "extreme and unlikely" exposure "would be at a slightly increased risk of developing cancer". For everyone else the risk would be "negligible". These conclusions, the MoD admits, are based on speculation, as "no UK Gulf veterans have so far been specifically tested for the presence of uranium" by the government. This is true, as far as it goes. But other Gulf veterans have been tested by independent researchers. And their findings, based not upon speculation but upon hard fact, suggest a very different level of contamination. Urine samples taken from veterans and measured by mass spectometry have been analysed by the medical researchers Professor Hari Sharma and Dr Rosalie Berthell. Their results suggest that the doses received by soldiers inhaling the dust are in the order not of 20 or 30 or 50 millisieverts, but of 778. As Malcolm Hooper, emeritus professor of medicinal chemistry at the University of Sunderland has shown, fine particles of DU entering the lungs are likely to stay in the body for between 10 and 20 years. The fact that DU is still appearing in some Gulf veterans' urine suggests he may be right. If this is the case and the samples taken so far are representative, then instead of a "negligible" or "slightly increased" risk of cancer, we could, he argues, expect between 1,500 and 10,500 of the UK's 53,000 Gulf war soldiers to develop fatal cancers as a result of their exposure to DU. Now no one can put her hand on her heart and say that the diseases beginning to emerge among both Iraqi civilians and ex-servicemen are the result of exposure to DU. But neither can anyone put her hand on her heart and say they are not. Yet this is precisely what the MoD has sought to do. Like certain other government departments, it has deployed not the precautionary principle, but the improvidence principle: shoot first, ask questions later. It's not hard to see why it should do so. Were the MoD to express any doubts about the safety of its procedures, the potential compensation claims would make the BSE disaster look cheap. DU dust is likely to have become so widespread that an effective clean-up operation in the Gulf and the Balkans would cost some trillions of pounds. The UK could also find itself firmly on the wrong side of the Geneva convention. So we can expect the unfortunate mistakes the MoD has made to continue for as long as possible. Statistics, as far as government departments are concerned, will remain not a science, but an art. g.monbiot@zetnet.co.uk * MoD knew shells were cancer risk Special report: depleted uranium Richard Norton-Taylor Thursday January 11, 2001 Army doctors warned four years ago that exposure to depleted uranium, which is used in US and British anti-tanks shells, increased the risk of developing lung, lymph and brain cancer. The warnings, in an internal MoD document, are in marked contrast to persistent public assurances - repeated by the armed forces minister, John Spellar, to the Commons on Tuesday - playing down the risk from DU. Its publicly stated view is that there is a potential but extremely small risk from soluble DU, a toxic chemical that could damage the kidneys. But an unpublished document by MoD medical experts, dated March 1997 and seen by the Guardian, paints a very different picture. "Inhalation of insoluble uranium dioxide dust will lead to accumulation in the lungs with very slow clearance - if any," it says: "Although chemical toxicity is low, there may be localised radiation damage of the lung leading to cancer." In a devastating passage under the heading "Risk assessment relating to Gulf war uranium exposure", it warns: "First and foremost, the risk of occupational exposure by inhalation must be reduced." It goes on to say: "All personnel... should be aware that uranium dust inhalation carries a long-term risk... [the dust] has been shown to increase the risks of developing lung, lymph and brain cancers." It adds: "Working inside a DU dust-contaminated vehicle without adequate respiratory protection will expose the worker to up to eight times the OES [the occupational exposure standard or accepted exposure level]." Mr Spellar excluded Gulf war veterans from his offer of voluntary tests even though many more DU weapons were fired in the Gulf than in the Balkans. It is not clear how widely the paper, a UK land forces document, was distributed among British commanders and to those in charge of DU weapons firing ranges in Cumbria and Scotland. Judging by the wording of the 1997 document, earlier precautions were insufficient. The MoD has admitted that even those official warnings were not passed on to soldiers in the 1991 Gulf war. Dr Malcolm Hooper, emeritus professor of medicine at Sunderland University and adviser to Gulf war veterans, said last night he was "absolutely appalled" that the report had been in the hands of the MoD while it claimed there was nothing to worry about. Questioned earlier yesterday in the wake of the MoD's embarrassing u-turn over the screening of Balkan veterans for DU contamination, ministry officials admitted it had not yet identified ways of testing them for DU exposure. They said they were awaiting a report by the Royal Society expected this summer. The British Legion yesterday called for a public inquiry into health problems facing Gulf war veterans. It described the government's offer of voluntary screening as belated and insufficient. "If a member of the public suffered from chronic fatigue, hair loss, severe bouts of depression or cancer, they would ask for and receive assessment, answers and treatment," the Legion's secretary general, Ian Townsend, said. Britons living close to depleted uranium firing ranges or factories producing the ammunition are also at risk, it was claimed yesterday. MoD sources said last night the document was a summary of another one and did not reflect the ministry's position on DU. * Nato brings out big guns to kill off cancer scare Special report: depleted uranium Andrew Osborn in Brussels Thursday January 11, 2001 Nato yesterday launched a massive damage limitation exercise it hopes will defuse growing concern that its use of armour-piercing depleted uranium-tipped shells in Kosovo may be the cause of unexplained cases of cancer among its troops. In a carefully orchestrated publicity campaign at the alliance's Brussels headquarters, Nato's secretary general, Lord Robertson, told reporters that "no link of any kind" had been discovered between the use of depleted uranium (DU) shells and leukaemia or other illnesses. "I do not believe the public should have been as excited as it has been. We are confident that there is little risk from DU munitions, but we refuse to be complacent," he said after a meeting of the alliance's top policy making body, the North Atlantic Council. However he was adamant that even temporarily banning the use of such shells would be a grave mistake. "We must base our analysis on facts and not be swayed by perceptions," he said. "I would not agree to the use of the munitions if I believed there was a hazard." Italy, Germany and Greece all pushed for a moratorium on the use of DU yesterday, but opposition from Britain and the US meant that the proposal was stillborn. Norway later said it too wanted a ban. Nato's 19 ambassadors did agree to set up a working party to coordinate information on DU shells, a move which will go some way to assuaging Italy and other states which are pressing for a full inquiry. But the alliance will not conduct its own inquiry, preferring to leave it to organisations such as the UN, which it believes are better equipped for the job. It has, however, already passed on the location of 112 sites in Kosovo where DU shells were used against Serb armour, and which it suspects may be contaminated. The UN said yesterday that it would consider marking and possibly sealing off these sites, and Nato has pledged to help with a clean-up. Acutely aware of public anger in countries such as Italy over the perceived dangers of the shells, the alliance yesterday distributed a thick dossier of scientific reports debunking claims that DU was dangerous to health, and wheeled out two US medical experts from the Pentagon who claimed that the metal was practically harmless. A former BBC defence correspondent, Mark Laity, now a Nato spokesman, also did his best to dampen rising alarm, in front of the biggest turnout of journalists since the Kosovo conflict in 1999. Seated behind a 30mm DU-tipped shell of the kind fired by American tank-busting A-10 planes, Mr Laity criticised the media for blowing the issue out of all proportion. He said DU also had several civilian applications and was used as ballast in airliners and in the keels of many yachts. But the concerns refuse to fade and have been fuelled by the death of six Italian Balkan peacekeepers from cancer. Iraq yesterday demanded an inquiry into the use of DU shells in the 1991 Gulf war, suggesting that its cancer rates have soared in the aftermath. * Depleted uranium - deadly weapon, deadly legacy? By Nick Cohen Sunday May 9, 1999 In 1991, I had my first and, alas, only taste of journalism as it is seen in the movies. I was called in the middle of the night to the home of a frightened source. After much fretting and several bottles of whisky, my appalling use of moral blackmail, which included appealing to his love for his children, succeeded and he agreed to hand over a secret document he had spotted at the offices of the Atomic Energy Authority. My informant had been astounded by its contents. He waited until he was alone, made a copy and fled. The depleted uranium shells used by the Allied armies in the Gulf War had left 'at least 40 tons' of radioactive dust on the battlefields of Kuwait and Iraq, the authority said. In theory, there was enough waste to 'cause 500,000 deaths'. A 'small dedicated team' should be sent to Gulf 'in total confidentiality' to establish the scale of the poisoning. The Pentagon said that 860,000 DU rounds were fired in the Gulf War - the Americans liked the weapon because uranium strengthens shells and allows them to penetrate tank armour. It was 'obviously not realistic' to expect mass deaths, the memo continued, because every one of half a million people would have to line up and ingest the dust, but, still, the authority was worried about radiation seeping into the water table. The memo has been been bounced round the Internet ever since. It hangs in cyberspace, a prophesy of disaster no one quite knows how seriously to take. Could the low-level nuclear waste the West left behind explain Gulf War syndrome and the birth of deformed Iraqi children? The debate is riddled with uncertainty. What is clear is that a US Army study in 1990 concluded that no dose of depleted uranium 'is so low' that the probability of it causing cancer 'is zero'. A single charred shell emitted radiation three times stronger than the safe limit for members of the American public. When a German scientist brought a spent uranium round back from Iraq, he was convicted by a Berlin court for 'releasing ionizing radiation on the public.' American A-10 'Warthog' planes armed with DU rounds are in action in the Kosovo war and the Pentagon now dismisses concerns that the shells cause sickness and mutilations as paranoid fantasy. But when our politicians foresee that the consequences of the fight against Milosevic will be with us for generations, there is a nasty and unresolved suspicion at the back of many minds that they might be predicting more than they realise. ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: nyt@blythe.org ================================================================= nyteeu-02.11.01-09:09:32-7109